Talking Top Tens: Amanda Curtis

CEO & Co-founder, Nineteenth Amendment

As a designer-turned-entrepreneur, Amanda Curtis knows first hand how difficult it is to break into the fashion industry. After growing up in the fashion industry and graduating from Boston University and Parsons, Amanda went from backstage at New York Fashion week to designing for celebrities and bringing a solo designed collection to judging at London Fashion Week. Despite all that success, she was never profitable. Nineteenth Amendment was developed as the way to help designers break into the fashion industry with the least amount of time, effort, and money (stiletto-strapping), while growing domestic micro-manufacturing. Amanda’s mission is to make the fashion industry better for everyone: from designers and shoppers, to manufacturers and retailers. Follow Nineteenth Amendment on Twitter and Instagram and Amanda on Twitter and Instagram.

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Your biggest fashion faux pas or a regrettable style phase:

A powder blue velour track suit in the early 2000s. Luckily I only wore it during track practice. I have a long held distaste for sweat pants. I second Karl Lagerfeld’s belief that “sweatpants are a sign of defeat”.

What do you love most about your work?

Every day I get to help designers get one step closer to achieving their goals, while reinvigorating the industry that I grew up in and love. Fashion is change and transformation, and it’s thrilling to be a part of the evolution of an industry.

One piece of advice you would give your 18 year old self:

Speak up. Growing up I was painfully shy. When I moved to New York at 22 I immediately felt the rush of freedom that comes with being one in a sea of millions. In NYC I finally felt free to voice my opinion in the same way that I dressed, boldly.

Your last great read:

Lena Dunham’s “Not That Kind of Girl”. Lena is a phenomenal and unapologetic story teller. I respect women who can do things, and break ceilings, without apology, especially ones who are accomplishing goals at a young age.

I’d love to learn to fence. My fiancé was a fencer in college and I would love to be able to dual with him. Also, I’m a big fan of the uniform and the formality of the sport.

Your greatest achievement:

Starting a company off of a career high then low. At 25, I flew with my first solo designed collection to London (in carry on) to present to the British Fashion Council for London Fashion Week. Despite industry success and funding, the collection was never profitable. I experienced first hand what I had seen in the industry for years, that brands bound to be successful ultimately failed because of financial attrition in a business model stacked against them. Shortly after there was a turning point where my motivation was no longer about preserving and saving my own work, but creating a way to preserve the future of the fashion industry I grew up in and loved. This is the motivation for Nineteenth Amendment.